


honey and wine

by erebones



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Long-Distance Relationship, Love Letters, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Masturbation, Pining, Political Alliances, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 05:22:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21174116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones
Summary: A year ago, Claude stood on the bridge to the cathedral and asked Lorenz to marry him. It was only half in jest.





	honey and wine

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [the golden hour](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20863763) by [erebones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones). 

> This is the sequel to "the golden hour" which I HIGHLY recommend reading before this one!! Hope you enjoy!! I didn't have the patience for a beta so if you see any glaring mistakes I'm happy to correct them. <3

Lorenz shuts the door behind himself and rests his forehead upon it, breathing deeply. His shoulders feel glued to his ears, and a steady throb pulses in the back of his head, like the insistent prodding fingers of a recalcitrant child.

Thank goodness for his servants, who think of everything. The steam from the bath already fills the room, warm and smelling of lavender and anemone. With a slow sigh, Lorenz cracks his neck to either side and begins to disrobe. Doublet on the clothing rack, then shirt, cravat, trousers, smallclothes. Boots and stockings tucked beneath. His collection of rings come off more delicately, settled with soft _clink-clinks_ on the sideboard. Then at last, with a little moan of relief, he steps into the hot water.

It’s just a shade above _too_ hot, but he settles into it anyway. The shock of it helps cleanse his mind of the putrid funk of politics. The Roundtable is as fractious as ever, perhaps more so in the wake of Fódlan’s unification, and this entire week has been a nightmare, untangling the heavy knot pulled taut by the war.

He can’t believe it’s been a year already. A year since he stood in the audience chamber of Garreg Mach and knelt to allow the Professor to drape the mantle of the Leicester Alliance around his shoulders. A year since he sat opposite Claude in the war room and signed the papers that would grant House Gloucester leadership of the Alliance and, by extension, united Fódlan. He shuts his eyes and sinks deeper into the water, ignoring the stinging at the back of his throat.

A year since he stood in the dusty remnants of their old classroom and knelt before the Prince of Almyra; kissed his knuckles; felt the gentle touch of Claude’s hand in his hair. A benediction, and a promise.

_We’ll do it together. Together, we’re unstoppable. _

At times like this he doesn’t feel particularly unstoppable. He just feels… frail. Hollowed out. Like an amphora whose contents have leaked out slowly through a crack at its base, little by little and then all at once. Goddess bless his personal staff, who frequently go above and beyond to ensure he’s eating at regular times and getting at least four hours of sleep on a given night. He should really go over the house finances again, see if they can afford another raise…

There’s a gentle knock at the door and his valet pokes his head in. “Will you be needing further assistance, your Grace?” he asks, looking put out that Lorenz has already disrobed on his own.

“No thank you, Elias. I wish to be left alone this evening. If you could bring me my robe from the next room that would be splendid of you.”

“Yes, your Grace.” He bows and withdraws back into Lorenz’s bedchamber, shutting the door firmly behind him to prevent any steam from escaping. Lorenz reaches laconically for the soap and begins working it into a lather.

It takes Elias a bit longer than it should just to fetch his dressing gown, but when he returns, the robe slung over one arm and a tea service in hand, all becomes clear. Lorenz eyes the plentiful biscuits and tartlets arranged on the tray and lifts an eyebrow as Elias settles everything on the sideboard. “I don’t need to be fussed over.”

“And yet here I am, fussing.” As ever, Elias is straight-faced as he speaks his mind—two qualities that Lorenz values highly in his personal attendants. “You will eat everything on this tray, your Grace, or Sophie will be up later with a proper dinner, regardless of your wishes.”

Despite himself, the empty pit in Lorenz’s chest warms a little. “Understood. Thank you, Elias.”

“Your Grace.” He bows and shows himself out, quiet as a shadow.

Lorenz doesn’t feel hungry, despite picking at his noon meal—a vapid and exhausting affair with some of the more difficult minor lords of the Alliance—but the smell of brewing tea is hard to resist. It’s his favorite blend: rose petals and blood orange, shipped directly from the Prime Minister of Adrestia himself. It forms a lovely deep red hue in the pot, as red as the roses that grow profusely in his personal gardens. He pours himself a cup just to enjoy the fragrance. At the edge of the platter, a small teacake catches his eye, drizzled in honey and topped with a delicate flake of crystallized lemon peel. They would pair quite well together…

_Someone_ in the kitchens knows what they’re about. In the space of ten minutes the tray is empty and he’s working on his third cup of tea. His fingers have started to prune, but he’s warm and full and there had been a small almond crescent cookie for afters, in the style of Almyra, so he’s feeling nostalgic and a bit wistful. Leaving the bath seems an impossible task. And anyway, he asked to be left alone, so what’s the harm? He’s earned an hour of respite, surely.

Almond and cinnamon linger on the back of his tongue despite the rosy tang of the tea, and it draws his mind backward, through months of long-distance letters and endless lonely nights to a gentler, happier time… Bittersweet, but sweet all the same. He’d taken tea with Claude the day before he left for Almyra. Whether by divine intervention, or the intervention of the Professor—or perhaps those things were one and the same—there was no one to interrupt their afternoon in the rose garden at Garreg Mach. They’d passed two hours in easy conversation over tea and Almyran pastries, feet tangled together under the table, hand in hand. And then, as the hours grew long with the shadows across the lawn, Claude had taken his arm and led him to the Goddess Tower.

It wasn’t the most adviseable thing Lorenz had ever done, but to this day he had no regrets. They had sat beneath the towering oak, its spring-heavy branches shedding curled green blossoms on their heads, and kissed for what felt like hours. And Lorenz, shaky with nerves but desperate to steal a tiny piece of Claude away for himself, had gone to his knees again and paid him back threefold for their tryst in the Eyrie.

He hums now to remember it. Though the details have faded, the eagerness is still sharp in his mind, like a whetted blade. It holds him hostage, quickening his breath as he slides warm, water-softened fingers down his chest to cup his hardening prick.

_Fuck, Lorenz, your mouth—!_

He would have scolded Claude for his blasphemy—there, of all places!—if his mouth weren’t otherwise occupied. He blushes a little to remember it, even as his fingers slide farther between his legs to press at his entrance. The hot water has relaxed him everywhere, it seems, and the inward press of one digit is smooth and easy.

_You’re gorgeous like this. On your knees. Fuck—_and he’d laughed, voice high and curled-up and incredulous—_I promise it’s not a Thing, I just… you’re so damn pretty, Lorenz, I should have told you every day—_

And Lorenz had redoubled his efforts, fingers digging bruises into Claude’s meaty thigh as he choked on his cock and tried to pretend this wasn’t the end.

Grief rises in him now, prickly and coarse like a rasp against his insides. But he swallows it down, pushes another finger in, a little rough, a little too fast, and it’s just what he needs.

_I wanna kiss you_, Claude had said, after. Slumped hazily against the back of the bench, trousers open, shirt pushed halfway up his belly, thighs splayed weakly to make room for Lorenz between them.

_It’ll taste like you. _

_Yeah. Me, on your tongue. _Claude curled his hand beneath Lorenz’s chin and leaned down to meet him. _Exquisite. _

Lorenz sinks his teeth into his lower lip and his fingers deeper into his body. Soap and water isn’t quite as comfortable as oil, but he’s relaxed enough now that it doesn’t matter. He massages that sweet, aching spot inside and gasps for air, seeing spots.

Claude had written to him a few days ago. The letter is tucked safely in a locked drawer, away from potential prying eyes—not because the contents are sensitive, politically, but because Claude takes great pleasure in sending the occasional risque note to “keep you warm during the long Leicester winters, dearheart.” Winter has faded now, giving way to sloppy spring rains and damp evenings that sink relentlessly into one’s bones, but he still treasures every letter Claude writes him. Especially the dirty ones.

_Has my poetry gotten better, love? I certainly get enough practice. I didn’t mean to start—that’s your schtick, right—but I was thinking about you last night and the words just came to me. Your skin at night is like silver, like starlight. Dazzling. Moonlit. Without blemish. I would kneel at your side and map every bare inch of you if you wished it, touch every stretch of your perfect skin. _

_I remember how sensitive your wrists are. Would you let me kiss them? Would you let me suck your fingers into my mouth one by one, nibble your palms, eat sugar out of your hand? I’ve never had much of a sweet tooth, but your skin tastes like honey and I crave it like the sun craves the flower in the depths of winter. _

Lorenz presses his fingers deep, eyes shut tight, the words marching through his mind in disarray as orgasm heaves through him like a ship in a gale. He can scarcely breathe through it—the force that surges through him is relentless, wringing him dry, and when it’s over he slumps back against the side of the tub hard enough that sudsy water splashes out onto the tile floor.

“Fuck,” he sighs aloud, head tipped back. The tingling rush fades, slowly, and to his deep disdain he feels tears gathering at the edges of his lashes. _Fuck._

_I miss you desperately_, Claude had written toward the end, a cold blade twisted through the hot belly of arousal his earlier rhapsodies had kindled. _More than I can say. More than I know how to express, even if I had a hundred years and a thousand pens, an endless fount of ink. Things are moving more slowly here than I would like. Almyra has a very firm idea of what Fódlan is, what its people are, and I am but one man. Sometimes I lie awake and think of you and wonder if I made the right decision. _

It’s the first time Claude has confessed such doubts to him, and apparently they’ve struck a deep chord. Today was difficult in myriad ways, but not more difficult than anything he’s faced so far—just more of the same enduring tedium, like scraping his nails against a chalkboard just to feel the shudder down his spine. Hearing Claude’s words, formed so fragile and sincere on the page, he wonders much the same thing. Wonders whether they did the right thing. Whether this struggle, persistent and so fucking bloody _endless_, will be worth it.

He’d thought the war was meant to end such grievances. And yet here he is. _Grieving. _

“I miss you,” he whispers to the unhearing room, voice cracked and raw with suppressed tears. “Damn you, von Riegan. I don’t know how much more of this torment I can withstand.”

He cries a little; lets the tears roll down his cheeks and plop into the water one by one. But all things pass, eventually, and after a few minutes of wallowing he sniffs, wipes his face, and rises from the water to face the cold embrace of his empty bed.

The robe, as he slips it on, is a small comfort. It was a birthday gift from Claude, sent by personal messenger with great haste and secrecy. The lining is silk the color of plum wine, the outside a forest green velvet embroidered with a hundred blooming roses. It’s heavy and warm, with deep pockets, and the tasseled sash bears the rising sun of Almyra worked in gold at either end. He still recalls the note that had accompanied it. _Wear it and remember that my affections rest always with you. Your deer(heart), Claude. _

He lingers on the tassels today as he draws it closed. What he wouldn’t give to have the real thing in his hands: the signet ring of a King pressing hot and insistent into his palm as he kisses his love’s knuckles over and over.

“You’re being maudlin,” he tells his reflection sternly. His eyes are a bit puffy, but he can’t quite tell if was the crying that did it or the lack of sleep. He presses cool hands to his face in lieu of a cold compress and sighs. “Time for bed, you old silly. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

The door to his bedchamber swings open easily on well-oiled hinges, and he tries not to shiver at the cool air wafting in his face. A scowl rises to his lips—some fool left the window wide open, despite the late hour and the chill in the evening air. The fire in the hearth gutters weakly as he strides across the carpet to shut the lead casing with a rattle and _snap_.

“Mmh…?”

Lorenz whirls to face the room, poorly-lit by the weak fire and a single candlestick on the desk at his hip, and conjures Fire in his palm. “Who’s there?”

A shadow moves on the bed, lumpish and indistinct. Lorenz curls his fist, quenching the spell, and gathers up candlestick and poker both, the latter still warm from resting on the hearth. Puzzled now more than anything—who on earth would steal into his room so late in the evening only to fall asleep there?—he approaches the far side of the bed and holds the candle high.

On the bed, squinting against the light as he blinks blearily awake, is—

“_Claude_?” Lorenz breathes. He throws the poker aside and reaches out with a soot-stained palm, thumb to the ridge of Claude’s cheekbone. The man beneath him smiles and catches his hand in his own.

“The very same.” His voice is thin and raspy with sleep, but it’s _him,_ really and truly, alive and breathing and blinking more awake by the second as Lorenz continues to loom over him. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep; you were just taking so _long_…”

Lorenz’s face floods with heat to think back on the past twenty minutes or so. Lying there, weeping, weak from pleasuring himself, while the man who held his heart waited for him _in the very next room—_

“I’m a fool,” he whispers, setting the candlestick aside.

“Well, I won’t beg to differ, but—”

“How long have you been here? How did you get _in_?”

Claude props himself up on his elbows and gives an easy grin. It pinches the corners of his eyes into crow’s feet, older and wiser than Lorenz remembers—a tiny detail that squeezes a merciless fist around his heart. “Oh, about an hour or so, I think. And I climbed through the window.”

Lorenz glances at the window he’d just slammed shut. “You _climbed_ through—Claude, my room is three storeys up!”

“I was on wyvern-back, of course.” He reaches out and grips Lorenz by the wrist, gentle but persuasive, guiding him to sit on the edge of the bed. “Your manservant saw me come in. I thought for sure he’d raise the alarm, but apparently climbing through windows with an armful of roses isn’t exactly a common assassination tactic.”

“You—roses…?” He cranes his neck, searching for the evidence. "Where—"

“Lorenz,” Claude says gently.

Lorenz stops. The tangled skein of questions unravels from his tongue and he is speechless, staring at the man sitting in his bed, still fully dressed in traveling gear—boots and all! Yet at this exact moment, Lorenz can’t find it in himself to give a damn. “Yes, Claude?”

Claude’s mouth quirks up on one side. His eyes are soft and reverent. “I missed you.”

Like a sail crumpling beneath the weight of doldrums, Lorenz slumps forward and buries his face in Claude’s shoulder. Half of him still wonders if this is a dream after all, some halcyon imagining brought on by too many teacakes. But Claude is sturdy and unwavering against him, smelling of leather and cardamom and the open sky, and if Lorenz weeps a little bit into his tunic, he hopes Claude will forgive him.

“Oh Lorenz,” Claude sighs, warm against his damp hair. His fingers weave through it at the base of his skull, teasing out the tangles, and Lorenz feels lips against his brow, weathered from exposure. “I’m sorry, my love.”

“Sorry for _what_?” Lorenz demands. He seals a kiss to Claude’s sweaty neck and withdraws, hands cradling his face like it’s some priceless Dagdan artefact. “You’re _here_, in my bed, in my arms—what on earth do you have to apologize for?”

“For taking so long to get here.” He’s smiling, still, but it’s thin with exhaustion and old grief. “I thought I could withstand the distance, but every passing day was more unbearable than the one before it.”

“You had work to do,” Lorenz insists weakly. “We both did.”

“Yes. Hard, difficult work, and more the fool I for thinking it could be better done apart.” Claude leans forward, forehead pressed to forehead, and slides his open palms down the front of Lorenz’s gifted robe. “You look even more beautiful in this than I imagined.”

He’s skirting around something, Lorenz can tell. But his eyes are so tired and his mouth so sweetly sad that he can’t bring himself to press for details. Instead he leans forward, closing the infinitesimal gap between them—how vast it had once been, impossible to bridge, and now so narrow!—to kiss Claude on the mouth.

Claude sighs, the brick wall of his shoulders crumbling into Lorenz’s hold as he kisses back. Slow, deep, the press of his tongue an insistent thing. Lorenz welcomes him readily, pushes his fingers through the windblown tangle of Claude’s hair. It’s a little bit longer than he had worn it a year ago, as if he’s just a few weeks shy of a trim, and he gathers it at the nape of his neck, using it as a handle to hold him close.

They part at great length, winded, lips swollen and red. Lorenz curses under his breath and clambers fully onto the bed, graceless as he settles in Claude’s lap. Claude laughs at him and gathers him close, at first by the waist and then slipping his hands up under the robe to cradle Lorenz’s thighs in his sturdy palms.

“Is this all right?” Lorenz asks, his body humming with renewed arousal. The fragility of this moment is not lost on him—Claude is clearly weary from travel and long months of heartsick suffering, and despite his ardor, Lorenz can taste the frantic edge of his kisses. He places a fingertip against Claude’s mouth as he opens it to respond, smiling a little when Claude nips at it in retaliation. “It’s a serious question, my dear. You’re tired. And there is something… a weight on your brow I don’t recognize. You came here with a purpose.”

“Of course I did—to hold my lover in my arms and make him sigh my name like sweet birdsong,” Claude rumbles, only half a tease. His eyes are dark and stormy as he licks their shared saliva off his lips. “What other purpose do I need?”

“Knowing you, there are at least three other purposes hidden up your sleeves, ready to be revealed at the most opportune time,” Lorenz chides gently. “But I won’t press you.” He kisses Claude’s cheek, his brow, scored with the faint beginnings of stress lines. “I am just happy to have you here…” He trails off, seduced by the wry curve of Claude’s mouth. Their kisses are shallower, now, but no less ardent; he can feel, with a thrill, the creep of Claude’s fingers up his thighs. Beneath the folds of his robe, his cock stirs to life, reinvigorated by his lover’s touch.

“Goddess,” Claude sighs as soon as Lorenz parts from him to kiss along his jaw. He is unshaven, stubbled in the cheeks, his beard growing in fuller along the bone in the Almyran fashion. Lorenz hums and nibbles at his throat. “Lorenz…”

“Mm?” Swallowing his reluctance, Lorenz sits back on his thighs, peering at him through the dim light. He should really get up and light another candle, but Claude’s hands on his skin are too wonderful to part from.

“You… are right, as usual,” Claude says, breathless but quickly gaining composure. “I didn’t come on a whim. It was a bit premature, to be honest.” He fidgets with the tassel of Lorenz’s robe, the golden sun glinting between his fingers like a lucky coin. “Tomorrow you should expect a runner with a message, bidding you grant leave for the Almyran navy to make port in Derdriu.”

Lorenz feels his mouth drop open of its own accord. “The _navy_?”

“Not _all_ of it, obviously, just a couple of ships. Well, one ship and two escorts. A diplomatic vessel.”

“Diplomatic,” he echoes. He sounds like an idiot, he knows, parroting Claude’s words back to him, but he can’t help it. If Claude in his bed is a sweet summer daydream, then this is very nearly a nightmare. He thinks, with some desperation, of Count Brecken’s insistence earlier in the day that Goneril’s weak hold over Fódlan’s Locket would spell the doom of Leicester, and wonders if it would be permissible to throttle the King of Almyra with a bedsheet.

“You look terrified, love,” Claude says, lifting a hand to cup his chin. Lorenz leans into it against his better judgement. “What’s the matter? My intelligence assured me that Leicester had no immediate plans to disrupt the peace—”

“Your intelligence is correct,” Lorenz interrupts, a bit desperately. “Things are… stable. For now. But there have been rumblings among some of the Lords, the old guard mostly, saying that a new ruler in Almyra would make for easier pickings…”

“All the better that I’ve come, then,” Claude says, eyes glinting with renewed ferocity. His grip firms, sliding around to cup Lorenz’s nape and draw him in for a swift, firm kiss. “I’ll be on that ship tomorrow. And I’ll be bringing good tidings, if you’ll have me.”

“Of course I’ll have you. I’ll have you however I can get you, even if it’s in full regalia in front of the entire goddess-damned Roundtable.” Lorenz kisses him back fiercely, the heat of annoyance giving way to desire. “It had better be good.”

“_What_ had better…?” Claude mumbles, already distracted as he kisses down Lorenz’s throat to the notch of his collarbone.

“Whatever scheme you’ve cooked up.” Lorenz pushes him away by the shoulders, down to the bed, down until Claude’s dark hair fans across the pillow and he is pinned there like a beetle on a card, breathless and grinning. “And I don’t care how early you have to flee in the morning to avoid being seen by respectable folk, you are staying the night with _me_.”

“Yes, _ser_!”

Lorenz bends in half and bites a blooming bruise to the center of Claude’s chest, where his thick leather tunic has come unlaced. “That’s _Your Grace_ to you. You’re in my territory now, von Riegan.”

“Oh!” Claude gasps, strangled between laughter and arousal. “You’ve gotten _bold_ in my absence.”

“Have I?” Lorenz asks snippily even as he rips open the rest of the laces all the way to his belt.

“_Yes_, flames alight—! _Look_ at you.” He tries to help but Lorenz bats his hands away, and he lays still and obedient, moving only to give Lorenz room to shuck his tunic and belt and the roughspun cotton shirt beneath. “The last time we fu—_uuuuuh, fuck_—”

Lorenz buries a smile against his abdomen. “Go on…”

“The last time… _hff_… we were intimate, you were… practically a blushing virgin… couldn’t even ask me out loud to suck your cock—”

His trousers are leather, too, rough on the outside and butter-soft on the inside where they rub up against silken long johns. Lorenz pulls the plackets apart and kisses a soft path down from his navel, following the coarse hair that clusters thicker and darker the closer he gets to his destination. Claude’s fingers tangle in his hair and Lorenz turns to press his lips to his calloused thumb.

“Claude,” he murmurs. His warm exhale passes over Claude’s erection, trapped beneath thin silk with little left to the imagination, and the hand in his hair spasms at the tease. “Would you like me to suck your cock?”

Claude lets out a strangled nonsense-sound and nods frantically. “Please. Goddess, pleased, I’ve missed you so much—”

The laces on his smallclothes are simple enough, silken cords threaded through matching eyelets that march down the front, but Lorenz ignores them in favor of kissing the head of Claude’s cock through the fabric. Thin Almyran silk transfers heat like sun to a metal roof, and he hums his approval at the warmth seeping through, the pulse of blood beneath silk and skin. Each kiss leaves a smudge of dampness behind—they form a haphazard path up the line of his erection, all the way to the top where his arousal has begun to leak through the fabric.

At the apex of him, Lorenz lingers, tongue laving him over and over until the silk is soaked through, practically transparent, clinging to Claude’s skin. He tastes like sweat and leather, like a day’s hard ride, and Lorenz would have it no other way.

“Baby,” Claude whimpers suddenly, clutching the shoulder of Lorenz’s robe in a death grip. “Oh, sweetheart, if you keep that up I’m gonna make a mess.”

Lorenz moans at the idea of licking him clean through his smallclothes—but his own prick throbs between his legs, insistent, and he allows Claude to drag him up the length of his body for a kiss.

“You say that,” he murmurs against Claude’s lips, “like a _mess_ is somehow antithetical to my goals, here.”

Claude chokes on laughter and rocks his hips up into Lorenz’s weight. “If you can still say words like _antithetical_, you’re lagging behind. Come here, dearheart.”

“I already am,” Lorenz says, mystified—but then Claude pushes open his robe and gets a hand around his cock, and all becomes clear.

“Claude—_fuck! _There’s—hang on, there’s oil in the bedside table…”

“_Oil_?” Claude demands. “You _greatly_ overestimate my patience right now, Lorenz.”

“It won’t take long,” Lorenz whimpers, even as he pushes into Claude’s confident fist. “I… in the bath…”

Claude’s eyes pop. “You did _what_ in the bath?”

“Oh, don’t ask me!” Lorenz wails, shielding his face from Claude’s incredulous gaze with both hands. “Just—the _oil_, Claude, _please_…”

“We’re revisiting this at a later date,” Claude says, and leans over the side. “Come here, sweet, let me see you.”

With some reluctance, if only because the room is cool against his skin, lifting goosebumps on his arms, Lorenz slides the robe off and folds it carefully on the other side of the bed. Beneath it he is completely bare, practically glowing in the dimness where he straddles Claude’s thighs. Claude finds the oil easily and paints a glistening strip of it across the pads of his fingers.

“Lean forward for me, darling.”

Lorenz does so, back arching in a graceful curve as he bends to Claude’s mouth. His hair, longer than it’s ever been, spills over either shoulder to shield them from the room, falling around Claude’s head on the pillow like a veil. Claude kisses him, warm and wet, and presses a finger into his body.

“Oh,” Claude says appreciatively, “you were right. So nice and relaxed for me…”

Lorenz rests his brow to Claude’s and breathes through the knot of anticipation in his belly as Claude works a second finger inside. They’re shorter than Lorenz’s own, especially given the angle, but they’re wider and calloused in different ways, and the thick drag of them against his insides is delicious. He squirms and moans, rocking against Claude’s hand. “Claude… please…”

“So eager for me,” Claude purrs, as though he’s not just as breathless, just as starry-eyed. “Your stamina is impressive, baby. How many times did you make yourself cum? Once, twice?”

“Just—just once,” Lorenz gasps. He is red-faced, so red it burns down his throat in a vivid blaze—surely Claude can feel it against his chest where Lorenz has buried himself like an ostrich in the sand. “In… in the bath…”

“Mmmm. Sounds nice and relaxing.” He crooks his fingers, pulling out even as he separates them, and the stretch is soft and smooth with oil. Lorenz recalls deliriously that this is farther than they’ve ever gone, in person. And yet the copious letters they’ve sent have confessed to far more intimate things than this. He wants to try them all, with Claude. But right now…

“I’m ready,” he says into Claude’s throat. He trembles and reaches between them, fumbling one-handed with the laces of his smallclothes. “Claude…”

“All right,” Claude soothes. His free hand pets at Lorenz’s flank, as if to soothe a startled horse. “All right. Come on then, sweet.Take it slow.”

“I’ve been waiting,” Lorenz puffs, red-faced, “for a _year_. I have no intention of taking it slow.” And with great pomp and ceremony, flushed red down his chest and his hair a wreck, he steadies Claude’s cock with one hand and sinks down, down, down to the root in one delicious slide.

It punches all the breath out of him and leaves him gaping like a fish—unattractive, surely, but he is skewered straight through, consumed from the inside, and he can’t bring himself to care. Beneath him, Claude is not much better off. He grips Lorenz by the waist and stares up at him like he’s staring at the goddess. Lorenz would tell him off for blasphemy if he could speak.

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Claude breathes, reverent, stroking an open hand down the center of Lorenz’s chest. He doesn’t drag him forward, but Lorenz bends down anyway, like a tree bough weighed with snow. His lips are too sweet to stay away for long.

“I’ve dreamed of this,” Lorenz whispers between kisses. His hand has found Claude’s and now lays pressed together on the sheets, steadying him as he rocks gently in Claude’s lap. Sweat rises to his skin as he moves, dewy, smelling of the lavender and rose oil from his bath; and beneath that, the salt of clean sweat and Claude’s riding leathers, the cold sting of fresh air. The windows are closed but he can still smell the ride on him, wild and untamed.

Claude bites at his lower lip and braces his foot against the mattress—finds his leverage, his anchor point, and fucks up into Lorenz in a steady rhythm, pressing deeper than Lorenz could have managed on his own. Lorenz bites back a cry and smothers his mouth against Claude’s broad chest. “Lorenz, baby,” he gasps, each breath hot and hungry against his brow, “c’mon, let me hear you. Tell me what you’ve thought of. Tell me.”

“Fucking you,” Lorenz chokes out, flush with the admission. He widens his seat as much as he can, grateful now more than ever for his strong cavalier’s thighs as Claude bucks and roils beneath him like a wild stallion. “Getting… on my knees for you… any time of day, wherever you asked it of me, your hands in my hair—”

Out of nowhere, the hand at his hip flies up and grabs him by the shoulder instead, using the momentum of their bodies to flip Lorenz on his back. The breath punches out of him, more from surprise than force—he’s taken harder tumbles off his horse and come out unscathed—and he groans loudly as Claude slides home once more.

It’s impossibly decadent, the contrasts between them. Lorenz, completely nude, skin flush with arousal and the heat of his bath; Claude still mostly dressed, though his chest and belly and cock are all exposed to Lorenz’s wandering hands. They drag down his neck, corded with muscle, and track fine red lines down the lightly-furred skin of his chest, kindling a growl behind Claude’s ribs.

“I love you,” Claude breathes, teeth grazing the side of Lorenz’s throat. He fits one strong, calloused hand beneath the tender hinge of Lorenz’s knee and hikes his calf over one shoulder, practically bending him in half. Lorenz, too shocked to stifle himself, cries out loudly—it echoes against the high ceiling and seems to rattle the windows as it stretches out, unimpeded, a whimpering cry for every thrust. Claude grins, but the light of victory in his eyes is tamped with tenderness as bends to kiss him.

“I’m close,” Lorenz warns, voice a strung-out sob. He clutches the sheets, Claude’s leathers, his broad, overbearing shoulders. He’s not sure how it’s possible, but Claude feels even more filled out beneath his hands than he remembers, strong and solid and burning from the inside out. His fire seeps through Lorenz in turn, catching greedily like sparks to dry tinder. “Claude, please—”

“You want me to touch you?” Claude croons. With one hand he grips Lorenz’s knee close, and the other traces a wandering path from his throat to his cock, leaking and red where it lays against his stomach. His pace, at first brutal, begins to slow, until he’s only grinding deeply into Lorenz, the undone plackets of his trousers scraping softly against his bare backside. “I think you can cum just like this, baby.”

“_Claude_…”

“Hmmm. Flames, you feel so good.” With a tender kiss to the inside of his knee, Claude releases his leg, lets it fold limply around his waist instead as he leans down to lick into his mouth. “You’re beautiful. How did I ever walk away from you, dearheart? How did I leave you alone for so long?”

Lorenz shuts his eyes, quivering beneath the weight of his body and his ardor. He knows it’s only his earlier… activities in the bath that have allowed him to hold out this long—but that reprieve is swiftly drawing to a close.

Claude’s hand on him is the final straw. He pushes his cock deep, so deep Lorenz sees stars bursting beneath his eyelids, and wraps his fingers around Lorenz’s prick without a qualm. Lorenz _shouts_ fit to wake the whole house and arches beneath him, a bow drawn taut in Claude’s capable hands. The arrow he fires aims true. Sobbing, shaking, Lorenz finds his peak and is thrust off of it in the same moment, thrown into desperate freefall by the blunt, clever workings of his lover.

Claude is still in him when he comes back to himself, panting like he’s run a thousand miles to be at his side. He smiles to see Lorenz meet his eyes, though it’s strained—he trembles with the effort of holding himself back, hair falling in his face, chest sheened with sweat. Lorenz reaches for him wordlessly, pushes a hand into his damp hair.

“Fuck me,” he whispers, his voice a raw, uncultured thing.

So he does. Claude has never been very good at following instruction, but before Lorenz he bows and obeys his order, rocking into him with short, sloppy thrusts. Lorenz leans his head back against the pillow and lets the tender aftershocks roll through him like thunder. And when Claude comes in him, deep-seated, mouth open and brow furrowed in ecstasy, Lorenz takes care to engrave that visage in his mind, wax to paper to bronze, a holy icon he will bear with him for the rest of his life.

Claude withdraws some minutes later, swaying on his knees. He is weak and malleable, and comes easily to the bed when Lorenz pulls at his tunic. “All right?” he mumbles, tucking his thumb against the curve of Lorenz’s cheek.

“Better than I’ve been in a very long time.”

Tender and only slightly more rational, Lorenz carefully peels Claude out of his riding leathers, his shirt, his boots. The bed is a wreck from their lovemaking and Claude’s travel-worn clothes, but they fall in it together anyway, bare bodies curled together like wayward parentheticals.

Stillness falls over them, hard-won. Lorenz pushes forward on the pillow until their noses brush, smiling at the weak, unformed kiss Claude purses in his direction. He holds the words on his tongue a moment longer, sweet as honey, before whispering, “I love you.”

“Mmm.” Claude’s eyelashes flutter, to no avail. “Love you.”

Lorenz trails a hand down his cheek, his throat, his chest. “Will you tell me, now?”

A soft exhale, a rumpled brow. Claude, half-asleep, mumbles, “Tell you what?”

“Why you’re here.” He presses his hand flat to Claude’s sternum and feels it when his heartbeat, grown sluggish after orgasm, trips forward again like a clock freshly wound. “If you truly love me, Claude von Riegan, you won’t make me wait until you walk off that ship tomorrow.”

“Hnn! You are… truly impossible. Lorenz… Hellman… Gloucester.” He doesn’t sound overly put out by it. With a sigh that stirs the downy hairs plastered to Lorenz’s forehead, Claude gathers him up in his arms and says, syrup-slow and warm, “I’m going to ask you to marry me.”

Lorenz feels his own heart stammer in his chest. He’s suddenly a great deal more awake. “I beg your pardon?”

“It’s all very… official. Hmm.” He yawns and blinks at Lorenz, clinging to coherence despite his exhaustion. “Don’t worry, I won’t spring it on you right away. There are… papers and things. Treaties…” He smiles and touches the tip of Lorenz’s nose with his finger. “Why do you look so surprised, dearheart? I promised you I would ask again, when everything was over.”

“_Is_ it over? Is anything ever over?” Lorenz asks, more bitterly than he means to.

“The war is,” Claude answers simply. “And there will not be another war in Fódlan for a hundred hundred years, not if I have anything to say about it.” He nestles a kiss to Lorenz’s furrowed brow. “Starting with this.”

To his great despair, Claude pulls away and slides from the bed, naked as the day he was born. Lorenz scrambles upright to follow, to dissuade him—but rather than replace his clothing in preparation to leave, he goes to his knees on the thick rug and takes Lorenz’s hand in his.

“I know this isn’t very proper,” he begins, dimples throwing shadows in the handsome planes of his face, “but you’ve fucked my secrets out of me, so I suppose there’s no more point in delaying it. Tomorrow, my dear, the King of Almyra will arrive in Derdriu to ask for the hand of Duke Gloucester in marriage, forever joining Almyra and Fódlan as sister-countries.”

Lorenz wants to interrupt him, to remind him that _Duke Gloucester_ could very well refuse—but he holds his tongue. Claude’s face is too earnest and affectionate to shatter, especially considering such a protest would be unfounded. There could be no greater alliance for their countries to make than such a union, and they both know it.

“However,” Claude continues, more gently than before, and he brings Lorenz’s hands to his face, one at a time, to bestow careful kisses to his knuckles, “right now it is late, and I am not a King. Right now I am just Claude, your faithful friend, the man who loves you with his entire being. And I have no pretty words for you—I’m sorry. All I have to give is my heart. So I will ask you now, tonight, before we must put on our mantles and the weight of our countries: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester, love of my life, my dearest, my rose. Will you marry me?”

Lorenz wants to shut his eyes against the swell of feeling in his breast, against the tide of tears that threaten to spill down his cheeks—but he cannot look away. Claude is too beautiful like this, humbly bent before him, skin lit warm and honey-gold by the low-lying fire. So he slips his feet to the floor, one at a time, and bends to kiss his brow, his upturned smile. “Of course I will,” he breathes. His throat is wet and choked, but his voice, somehow, is steady. “Yes. Yes, Claude von Riegan, I will marry you.”

“Thank the goddess,” Claude exclaims, a burst of raw emotion flowing out of him in a gust of laughter. He kneels up and wraps his strong arms around Lorenz’s waist, burying his face in his stomach. “It would’ve been terrible if I’d come all this way only for you to say _no, thank you_.”

“As if I could refuse you anything.” Lorenz blinks rapidly and wipes at the tears on his face with one hand, the other tangled securely in Claude’s windblown mop. “I am devoted to you utterly.”

“And I to you.” When Claude looks up, his eyes are suspiciously shimmery, but he’s smiling—wide and joyful and unrestrained. “And I will never be parted from you again, dearheart. I swear it.”

><><

The day is fine and fair as Lorenz stands in full regalia at the end of the pier, watching the stately rowboat come ever nearer. At his left hand, Hilda bounces a little on her toes, shielding her eyes against the sun.

“And you’re _sure_ you don’t know why he’s come? And without any notice?”

“I may have some idea,” Lorenz admits. He stands a little straighter as the boat’s occupants come into view, flanked by rowers: Nader, recognizable even from this distance by sheer size alone, court robes flapping around him like wings; the slim, earnest shape of Cyril, standing erect and proud beside his liege. And Claude, of course, dressed now in elegant robes of his own, hair tucked beneath his turban and a ceremonial sword glinting at his hip. Lorenz’s heart rises into his throat at the sight of him and he folds his hands together behind his back, one gripping the other fit to rip it off and throw it into the sea.

At his side, Hilda eyes him suspiciously, lips curled up in a pretty smirk. The wind is merciless, whipping her long pink hair back from her face, but she lets it go without a care, having at long last shed the _ingénue_ persona since taking her father’s place at the Roundtable in the name of House Goneril. “You’re as bad as he is,” she says, “with your _schemes_,” and Lorenz can’t find his own voice quickly enough to deny it.

His fingers lace together, gloves hands trembling as the moment draws near. Beneath the fitted silk, on his left hand, a slight protrusion mars the fabric’s perfect fit. A delicate golden band, simply constructed, its form merely a pedestal for the exquisite ruby set at its center. Around its edges, yellow citrine marches in a blooming rose pattern. The rising sun of Almyra circling a Gloucester rose. Claude had bestowed it on him the night before—earlier than what was proper, but no one else needed to know. Still, the feel of it beneath his questing fingers settles him, eases the tensile set of his shoulders as the Almyran delegation draws ever nearer across the waves.

They are close enough now that he can meet Claude’s eyes and know his gaze is being met in return. The King’s expression is stoic, but beneath it is a twinkle in his eye he can’t erase, a shadow of an eager smile lingering in the corners of his mouth. Lorenz bites his tongue.

“You’ve done something,” Hilda says at last, equal parts suspicious and delighted. “It’s all over your faces.”

“Of course we haven’t,” Lorenz replies tartly. Nerves make him sound snappish and sharp, but Hilda only laughs, reaching up to squeeze his shoulder with a gauntleted hand.

“And I’m the Queen of Faerghus. Don’t worry, I won’t tell… as long as you promise to let me be your maid of honor.”

“_Hilda_—!”

“Promise!” she laughs. “Or I’m telling the Professor you went off and got married to the king of a foreign country without warning her first.”

“We aren’t _married_,” Lorenz insists, mouth dry. “...not yet.”

Hilda has no more time to pry secrets out of him—the rowboat kisses the edge of the dock with a hollow _thunk,_ and two Leicester guards leap forward to help secure it. Cyril steps out first, broad-shouldered and stern, though his eyes are bright and clear with good humor. Nader next, dwarfing him, beard oiled into a pristine shape and clasped with golden rings. And last…

Claude’s boot hits the deck and Lorenz cannot bear it—he is swept up, off his feet, out of his head, ascending to the clouds. He steps forward, breaking formation, and before the assembled court of Leicester he takes the King of Almyra into his arms and doesn’t let go.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on twitter at @rachebones being gay and loving lorenz von fire emblem
> 
> I didn't describe it in GREAT detail but Claude's formal regalia is based on the design here: https://twitter.com/_goldenHAM/status/1185722266958483456/photo/1


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